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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/25887799">Gold, My Darling</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/musiclily88/pseuds/musiclily88'>musiclily88</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>One Direction (Band)</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Ambiguous Relationship, M/M</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-08-14</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-08-14</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-05 10:41:04</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>General Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>1,033</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/25887799</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/musiclily88/pseuds/musiclily88</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>12</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>19</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Collections:</b></td><td>Fine Line Fic Fest</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>Gold, My Darling</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>“You forgot we were golden,” Harry says down the phone line, voice maudlin and small.</p><p>“What does that even mean?” is the response, and it’s not an entirely fair one.</p><p>:</p><p>It’s like their whispers in the dark meant nothing, because they were too bright, so bright like sunshine, so bright that they reflect on each other like sunlight through the window at daybreak, their bodies warm under a bedsheet, skin touching at their knees and chests, golden like starshine, like stardust, like every pretty thing—they learn to melt into each other, warm and liquid.</p><p>Sunflower petals fall one by one—he loves me, he loves me, he loves me—there’s no <em> not </em> here, only dappled, drunken longing— because they’re lying in perpetual summertime.</p><p>And also, they’re lying.</p><p>:</p><p>It’s hard to know what to think, between the two of them, and even harder to know what to say.</p><p>They only know what they feel, the each of them, and sometimes between themselves, but sometimes it boils (melts) down to the physicality of it all.</p><p>Because bodies can be easy.</p><p>Their bodies are their bodies, and yet sometimes they belong to each other (hot heat turns to sweat turns to suntans in the summer nights, because how could it not?)</p><p>But what happens when they start to burn?</p><p>What happens when they burn each other?</p><p>:</p><p>They burn like an ember, orange at first, then catch fire bright-red and yellow in turn, and it all feels golden.</p><p>How could it not?</p><p>It all feels golden until it doesn’t.</p><p>:</p><p>Embers burn to black eventually.</p><p>Sometimes, things fade.</p><p>They do that naturally, sure, but that doesn’t make the feelings easy.</p><p>It doesn’t make anything easy.</p><p>They’re not easy, despite all the jokes and deflections Harry makes to the opposite.</p><p>:</p><p>He opens his eyes, sure, but part of him, a big part of him, can’t focus.</p><p>It’s all too bright, hot-white-bright in a bad, bad way.</p><p>:</p><p>They take ahold of one another, particularly when things get dark, when nightfall hits.</p><p>Harry can’t stop feeling alone, no matter how hard he tries.</p><p>:</p><p>And then they break things.</p><p>:</p><p>“It’s like your eyes have gold in them,” Harry says, voice bright with a smile like it’s a compliment, straddling a cute boy’s hips, a bit too warm in a way he can’t fully internalize.</p><p>“I don’t know what that means.”</p><p>“I—I don’t either,” he says leaning back as he closes his eyes.</p><p>:</p><p>When he opens his eyes again, he’s back-down in the guest room at his sister’s flat, looking directly into the ceiling light.</p><p>It might have been two days. It might have been a week.</p><p>“Feel alone.” His voice croaks.</p><p>“Christ, H.” Gemma sighs from the doorway. “Let’s have some tea.”</p><p> </p><p>Tea doesn’t entirely help, but it doesn’t hurt.</p><p> </p><p>“How did I get here?” he asks, sipping gently at his mug of milky tea.</p><p>“I actually don’t know.”</p><p>“Do you think—” He can’t bring himself to ask the full question. <em> Did he bring me here? </em></p><p>“Kind of suspect so. Yeah.”</p><p>“Fuck.”</p><p>“Your word, not mine.”</p><p>“Yeah.”</p><p> </p><p>He leans toward the bright, warm light, mug wrapped tightly in his hands.</p><p>Well. He’s trying to.</p><p>And yet, and yet, and yet.</p><p>And yet, he feels broken, he feels hopeless.</p><p>He doesn’t feel in his right head.</p><p>Embers turn dark sometimes.</p><p>:</p><p>
  <em> Hearts get broken. </em>
</p><p>He heard that somewhere, he thinks, and he curls one hand over his jaw as he’s lying in bed, staring at the ceiling like maybe it’ll fix absolutely everything for him.</p><p>He feels hopeless and broken.</p><p>“Gemma?” he calls, probably not loudly as he’d like but perhaps too loudly for her taste.</p><p>“Yeah, H, what’s up?” She ducks her head around the door of her guest room, brows narrowing.</p><p>“I don’t want to be alone.”</p><p>“Oh.” She nods slowly before knee-walking across the duvet. “Okay. I’ve got you.” She tucks around him slowly.</p><p> </p><p>“Hearts get broken,” Harry mumbles into Gemma’s shoulder, arm wrapped around her ribs in return.</p><p>“They do.” She sighs, curling her arms tighter. “I know they do.”</p><p>“I love you.”</p><p>“I love you too.”</p><p>:</p><p>“Get up.”</p><p>It’s either been hours or days between their interactions, Harry isn’t entirely sure—and maybe that’s telling.</p><p>“No.”</p><p>“It wasn’t a request.” Gemma sighs, putting down a cup of tea beside the bed. “You’re out of your head.”</p><p>“I’m out of my head.”</p><p>“Yes. That’s what I said.”</p><p>“That rhymed.” Harry tips his head, giving her a bright smile.</p><p>“And—there we are.” She shoots him finger-guns. “You know he’s not that big a deal, right?”</p><p>“You say what you say.”</p><p>“I say what I say,” she agrees, “And I happen to know a few things.”</p><p>“You were always smarter than me.”</p><p>“Everyone is aware of this. Now, get up.”</p><p>:</p><p>They don’t stay inside to finish their tea. Instead, they go out to get doughnuts.</p><p>“Doughnuts don’t help anyone get over a boy,” Harry says, heaving a sigh.</p><p>“They don’t <em> not </em> help you get over a boy,” Gemma notes as they continue walking.</p><p>“I’m sorry, are you a registered therapist?”</p><p>“I’m your big sister,” she says, leaning sideways to ruffle his hair. “And don’t say sorry if you don’t mean it.”</p><p>“Sorry.”</p><p>“No. You’re not. Not to me.”</p><p>Harry stops dead in his tracks, doughnut in one hand. “Fuck.”</p><p>“Pretty much.” She finishes her doughnut. “Bro. Call him already.”</p><p> </p><p>:</p><p>“When it ended,” Harry says into his mobile, voice soft.</p><p>“Yeah.”</p><p>“I didn’t want to let you know.”</p><p>“I’m aware.”</p><p>“You—I—I don’t know.” He inhales, holding his breath for a moment. “We shone too bright.”</p><p>“No such thing.”</p><p>“I feel like we’re gonna burn out like a dying sun.”</p><p>“Sun’s still shining from where I’m sitting.”</p><p>“I’m scared.”</p><p>“I know. I am too.”</p><p>“Are we too broken?”</p><p>Somehow, he can hear a smile at the other end of the phone. “I don’t think there is such a thing.”</p><p>“So we’re—”</p><p>“We’re golden.”</p><p>“It’s not just—”</p><p>“I know you don’t want to be alone.”</p><p>“It’s not just that.”</p><p>“Okay.”</p><p>“It’s that I want to be with you,” Harry murmurs.</p><p><em> “Fucking finally!” </em> Gemma calls from the other room, and Harry starts to laugh.</p><p>“Finally. Yeah, that’s a word for it.”</p>
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